Football is an unpredictable game, and watching it teaches you to expect the unexpected. But it cannot prepare you to deal with something like this.
As all of you reading this will by now know, Phil Walsh, senior coach of the Adelaide Football Club, died yesterday in circumstances that don’t bear repeating.
It seems so trivial now but I was writing about him just a few days ago, and poking a bit of fun at his comments about Van Gogh in what will now be one of his last press conferences.
Still in the process of collecting my thoughts I found myself re-watching that presser yesterday afternoon and Walsh’s comments hit me in a way they hadn’t last week.
Phil Walsh said that he could see the beauty in Van Gogh’s frustration. In this, he acknowledged that even in the midst of great pain and suffering, there is beauty to be found.
It would be foolish of me to pretend that there is some beautiful aspect of this tragedy that will make things better – some hidden silver lining that will make things seem OK.
There isn’t. This was a horrible, ugly day. I hope we never see it’s like again.
Still – seeing the beauty in things. I think if there’s a message to take from Phil Walsh, that’s a pretty good one. It’s the one I will take at least.
I never met Phil Walsh, and to be honest I was only vaguely aware of his presence in the game before he was named Adelaide’s new coach at the end of 2014.
But we were connected. Phil Walsh called himself a ‘football lifer’, someone for whom football was not merely a hobby, or a passion; it was life.
He was a man who, when he came to the end of his playing career, pushed on to become an assistant coach in a time when there was little monetary reward or glory in that decision.
He wasn’t in it for any of that. He just loved the game. He couldn’t step away from football any more than he could stop breathing.
I shared that trait with him, though it was expressed in different ways. Him as a player and a coach, myself as a fan and a writer.
If there is anything beautiful that can be salvaged from these tragic events, it is the poignant and painful reminder of how football unites us all.
We are a family, you and I, and everyone who takes up this passion, whether it’s on your brain all day and night, or just for a few hours on the weekend.
Our family lost a brother today, and like any family, when we lose a loved one, we hurt.
Football brings us together. It creates bonds between us in a way that nothing else can. Today we are sharing each other’s pain, but, in time, we will again be sharing each other’s joy.
I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I doubt Phil Walsh would have either.
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